Category Archives: blogging

In this post I get more than a little ranty about my pet internet peeves and Darren decides to throw in his tuppenceworth too. However, on a positive note, I do share some useful resources and content. I wonder finally is it time to resurrect Feedback Friday?

A tweet I saw from Michele Neylon in Blacknight and another from Ann Donnelly of O’Mahony Donnelly eBusiness reminded me of one of my personal online pet peeves. They were both complaining about sites that did not work if you left out the “www” e.g. iia.ie versus www.iia.ie. It’s a little thing I know but I did title this post as being about my pet online peeves!

Are you trying to make me mad?

Will I go on? Okay a little venting! Another one that drives me a little more bonkers than I am already is Out of Office emails that begin with Re: + my subject line. This means that I have to check them just in case you have replied to my email. Not a problem when it’s an individual one to one email but when you send to a list of over 6000 as we do with the Digital Digest it can become a bit of a chore. I know, I know that not everyone has control over how this works on their email but are you sure you can’t fix it on your email?

On the subject of email, I am asking you now to check your signature and make absolutely sure that you include a contact phone number at the very least after you sign off on every email, even then ones that only say “Grand fine with me.”

Whatever about not including your phone number on every sign-off a registered company in Ireland is required by law to include certain details on their website (See Information Leaflet No.7 on the CRO website). It is best practice to include as much detail in your contact page as possible. We also use Meebo (see on the right) to allow people to contact us live. With the recent news that Google will be including negative/ positive reviews in their search algorithms wouldn’t you prefer that people contact you one to one with their complaint rather than write an online review that is negative about your customer service rather than focussing on your exemplary product? (Thanks Christophe Bernigaud for the link!)

I can see your code.

On a slightly more serious note I abhor websites that rip off content. Obviously we’ve all discovered through Google Alerts that some blog somewhere has wholesale copied and pasted our blog content as part of some weird link farming activity (SEO specialists – help me out on this one!) but it’s clear that this is fairly automated and it won’t take long for the host of the free blogging platform to shut them down. What bugs me is when legitimate businesses copy and paste content from other sites, maybe write a prefacing paragraph and sometimes include a link back to the original post. A couple of blogs I have seen recently have done this and I am racking my brain trying to work out if they think this is okay. Yes by all means quote salient points from the content you have read online but please reference and link to it properly. This one particular blog I had ocassion to visit had really good content and I was thinking, “This guy is wasted here: his content is gold!” It was only after day 5 of 5 of top-quality content that a link back to the original article that I realised it was a word for word match. There’s a name for this and it’s copyright infringement and even if the law can’t help you, by Nelly, the internet will. Another give away on a different blog was the fact that the blogging software garbled the pasted text, displaying the HTML code for special characters (eg &aacute;). Nobody types that stuff by accident… I presumed the worst and thought, “Poor show, chaps!”

When my colleague Darren, our events & training manager, realised I was writing this post he sent me an email with his pet peeves for your enlightenment. We’re easily ticked off, aren’t we?

Websites that automatically play music or videos. It’s not helpful – I know how to click play! It’s more likely to make me close your page rather than sit and listen to your new song/advertising spiel/video introduction…

Websites that don’t actually tell me what the company does. Is it so hard to include a short paragraph telling me what you do? Where’s your About Page?

Pop-up ads. Do I really need to elaborate on this one?

Not knowing the difference between you’re and your.

Typos in generel. Peopel, we live in de age of Splelchek, use it.

Sites that are incompatible with my Mac. This makes me sad and it makes your website useless to me.

Farmville.

I’m done (for now)

Regular readers of this blog will remember a feature I ran on a Friday for a good while called Feedback Friday. It was intended to help companies get some ideas about areas in their sites (their own or clients’) that needed improvement. Well Darren reckons it’s time we resurrected this feature. So if you are a member of the IIA and you would like some constructive feedback about your website or an element of your site or a client’s site please email details to me and we’ll kick off again.

To anyone who has ever struggled to maintain their site using a Content Management System (CMS): you’re not alone, we feel your pain.

Chris and Paul in DesignByFront.com are doing some research into the user experience of content management systems, so if you’ve ever been involved in managing a website, they’d love to get your insight.

Why are they doing this?

Front believe that every website should get better and better and better over time. Unfortunately, many people find it difficult enough to look after the site they have, rather than getting to focus on continuous improvement.

Almost every site delivered at Front uses a content management system so that non-technical users can take ownership of the site once its live.

Key to this is the regular addition of high-quality content. However, too often the design of Content Management Systems don’t reflect the way that those involved in authoring, editing or reviewing content actually work; despite claims to the contrary, almost all CMS tools are designed around how a site works for its users, rather than focusing on the needs of those who’ll be responsible for it once live.

This creates a barrier to publishing good content, and restricts the growth and quality of the site. A better CMS experience should result in better content being created for a site, which in turn results in a better experience for the site’s users.

Front are not the first to think about this. Jeff Veen wrote about the problems inherent in Content Management Systems way back in 2004, but things haven’t changed much since then, and now it’s time to get the discussion started again.

According to Front:

To make sure we really understand what the key issues are, we’re carrying out a small piece of design research on content management. We want to know how the experience of using a CMS could be improved, and so along with performing user interviews and usability testing, we’ve put together a quick survey to gather input from the broader web community.

We’re doing this research because we realise that while we put a lot of time and attention into creating beautiful online experiences for our client’s users, we perhaps don’t give enough thought to the experience of our clients themselves.

Dublin City University’s Ryan Academy for Entrepreneurship is delighted to announce the establishment of a seed venture fund of €1 million for early stage technology start-up companies. The new venture fund is an accelerator fund, which will help fund new companies develop from concept to product. The aim of the venture fund is to jump-start a number of high technology start-ups in Ireland with an emphasis on software and biotechnology hardware ideas such as medical devices and diagnostics.

The successful companies will get approximately €50,000 in direct funding, as well as a three-month programme of support from the Ryan Academy for Entrepreneurship, which will include office space, mentorship and specially-designed networking and educational programmes. The financial support for the venture fund is provided by the One Foundation. In addition any profits generated by the Accelerator Fund will be returned to the Fund for further investment.

“This is an important initiative for Ireland and I am delighted that the Ryan Academy is providing a catalyst for the next generation of Irish entrepreneurs. This initiative is not only another clear manifestation of DCU’s commitment to be the University of Enterprise but also addresses an obvious deficit in the pathway from concept to successful product”, said Professor Brian MacCraith, the new President of Dublin City University.

The first round of investment will open for applicants in October this year, with the first four successful entrepreneurs being announced before the end of the year. A further eight entrepreneurs will be funded in 2011 and again in 2012. Each of these entrepreneurial groups will then work with the Ryan Academy to develop their company, building key and lasting business relationships along the way to help them sustain a viable business. The Ryan Academy is aiming to work with other seed funds and individual investors, and will be seeking to increase the fund size over time.

“Raising the money to get through the first year is often difficult for entrepreneurs and our objective is to support twenty early-stage entrepreneurial teams over the next two and half years” said Gordon McConnell, Deputy-CEO of the Ryan Academy and venture manager for the new fund. “We will work with other later-stage angel investors, other funds and the venture capital community to help ensure further funding for these new companies. We want to help nurture innovative technology ideas and act as a launchpad for new entrepreneurs.”

The fund is unique as it is both a university-related venture fund for start-ups across Ireland, as well as offering a programme of support for these startups through the Ryan Academy and its network.

The new fund will be governed by a Technology Advisory Board, which will be announced later in the summer. Further and regular updates on the new fund will be posted on the Ryan Academy Tech Entrepreneurship Blog.

The DCU Ryan Academy is a partnership between Dublin City University and the family of the late Tony Ryan (Ryanair). The Academy exists to promote entrepreneurship and innovation and to use our iconic building in Citywest as a dynamic hub for entrepreneurs and researchers to develop ideas, learn new skills and network. The Ryan Academy is working with researchers and entrepreneurs to help them achieve their potential.

Titled “Doing Business in the Cloud”, this document is written specifically for the Irish market. A section focuses on small to medium sized businesses (SMEs) but the bulk of the document examines the benefits and obstacles of cloud computing for large enterprises.

The whitepaper was driven and shaped by market research commissioned by the Irish Internet Association in August 2009. It discovered that 54% of respondents did not have a clear idea understanding of cloud computing; how it works and the advantages, efficiencies and savings, that it brings to Irish businesses.

One of the whitepaper’s first and notable successes the adoption of an Irish industry accepted definition of Cloud Computing, overcoming this market confusion. This definition has been accepted and endorsed by Enterprise Ireland, the IDA, the Irish Software Association, ICT Ireland and the Irish Internet Association to be used from now on.

In a few short days, many of Ireland’s best bloggers will descend upon Galway to celebrate all that is great about the Irish Blogosphere. Congratulations to all those who were shortlisted, including a number of IIA members. High fives all ’round and have a great weekend.

For a full list of nominees go here and if you want to attend the event in the Radisson in Galway this Saturday, you can pick up a ticket here for just €15.00. 🙂

Twestival 2010 is happening on Thursday 25th March from 6.30 pm – 12.30 at the ODEON on Harcourt Street. This year Concern is the benefactor of the WORLDWIDE event.

This Thursday, people in hundreds of cities around the world will come together offline to rally around the important cause of Education by hosting local events to have fun and create awareness. Twestival™ (or Twitter Festival) uses social media for social good. All of the local events are organized 100% by volunteers and 100% of all ticket sales and donations go direct to projects.

Hello to all the IIA members and those who follow the blog. I just wanted to introduce myself. I’m Darren Byrne and I am the newest member of the IIA team. I’ll be helping out for a few months, while Roseanne is on maternity leave. You’ll most likely see me blogging, tweeting, Facebookering (hmmm!!!) for the IIA when I’m not pushing papers.

You may know me from such interwebby places as Twitter, Culch.ie and my own humble blog at DarrenByrne.com. If you have any queries, thoughts or ideas regarding the IIA, please feel free to get in touch darren {at} iia {dot} ie

I’ve been blogging since 2003 (not here on my personal blog) and much of that blogging was, I presumed, never read by anyone. But every once in a while someone would mention my blog to me in conversation or I would receive a comment and it would all click into place and inspire me to keep going. As more people use social media tools and more of those tools help us broadcast our content (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed) and help us collect, sort, digest and engage with others’ content there will be less blogging in the dark. Some fear that there will be just less blogging and I understand this fear. However I think that a blog should be the backbone of your social media presence, allowing you to expand on the ideas that attract people to you (and your brand if you’re representing a business) in other social media. It also allows you to develop ideas and conversations in your own space.

However reading about Disqus, “a real time comment system”, makes me realise that services like this will give commenters just as much control and ownership of their content as the bloggers who inspired the comment. This acknowledges the importance of commenting and rightly so. It’s been a while since I used a comment management system. I tried one maybe two years ago and it was very clunky but I must give this a go again.